Rebirth
by chaosattractor
Summary: In honor of the importance of 1/26/10 in the Death Note canon, this is a fic about what comes next for Mello and Matt after the Takada abduction. Two chapters, one from each of their POV's. Enjoy! :D
1. Matt's side

The screaming sirens and people were fading into silence. The taste of cigarette smoke was vanishing from lips gone numb, and the scent of blood and gunpowder had all but evaporated. The world was turning gray. All that remained was searing agony.

His heart gave one final labored thud and then gave out.

He fell.

No life flashed before his eyes. No tunnel to a bright light opened up in front of him. There was only darkness. Death was exactly as Matt had imagined it: lonely, painful and terrifying.

Then he landed.

Time passed while Matt blinked numbly, unable to comprehend what was happening. Here he was. He was dead, and yet here he was.

Could he have misunderstood? Was he just in a coma, his mind trapped in limbo? But he knew immediately that that wasn't right. He was dead, and there was still a _him_ to know it.

He laughed, a shrill, nervous sound. "Mello's going to be so insufferably smug about this—" Matt hadn't thought it was possible. He had believed that death was the final end for as long as he could remember. Learning otherwise was too much to handle. His mind didn't even try to process it. It skipped past denial and rationalization and went straight to mute acceptance. There was no point in questioning the evidence of his own experience.

Why had he been so convinced that the afterlife didn't exist, anyway? He knew about the death notebooks. He had heard Mello's stories of shinigami. If Kira could kill through supernatural methods, it meant that other supernatural phenomena might also exist. Logically speaking, it meant that the afterlife was at least a possibility. But he had never been able to bring himself to acknowledge it.

Matt shook his head. "I'm just a skeptic to the end, I guess," he muttered. He got shakily to his hands and knees, and dared to lift his head and look around for the first time.

What he saw was gray stretching from horizon to horizon, with no discernable break between ground and sky. It was illuminated with a uniform, directionless light. It put Matt in mind of the inside of a cloud, but his movements didn't create eddies like they would in fog. He reached downwards and immediately jerked his hand back when it passed below the level of his knees without encountering any resistance.

He had established that he was here. Now he began to wonder where herewas, exactly, and what he was supposed to do next. He couldn't see anything. Was this some kind of test? He stood up and put one foot in front of the other, probing the ground carefully to see if it would hold his weight. It did, and after a few steps he accepted that it would continue to do so. He started walking.

Actually, it wasn't just that he was a skeptic. He had an anti-belief. He had believed so firmly that there was no such thing as a "soul" that he had been completely closed-minded towards any alternative.

The insight popped into his head with such suddenness and clarity that it startled him into stillness. He turned it around in his mind, weighing it, and decided that it was true. "Then I guess I'm just stubborn till the end," he murmured.

Yes. He was. Why had he been so married to that idea, anyway? The question was very relevant, given that he had just been proven wrong.

It took him a few minutes of thinking before he could articulate the answer clearly. It was because the afterlife and the "soul" were directly connected to the idea that there was some sort of higher authority or "God" watching over the world, the theory that things happened for a reason. Those were things that Mello used to talk about with great conviction, but they had always baffled Matt—because that clearly _wasn't _how the world worked. It ran according to cause and effect, not because there was some ultimate purpose behind things. Humans were just meat and bones, carrying out biological functions based on chemical processes. It was the laws of physics and the forces of evolution that had shaped them, not some benign guiding hand from above. Each of them tried to have fun and find some sort of happiness in life, and that was it. There was no deeper meaning than that.

_But the afterlife is clearly real. So do the rest of your convictions about the way the world works still add up? _

It was the first time that Matt became aware that there was actually a second voice, and not just the sound of his own thoughts playing devil's advocate. He looked around warily, but saw nothing. "Are you real?" he said aloud. "I know I'm isolated and in sensory deprivation, but it seems too soon for me to have lost my mind."

_Real._

Matt hesitated, then shrugged. There was no point in questioning his sanity. If he was crazy he couldn't trust his own thoughts anyway; it was easier just to accept it and move on.

"Do my beliefs add up?" He repeated the question aloud as he considered it. Then he snorted. "Yes they do. Overwhelmingly." His life had been full of bad things that happened for no reason at all, from birth to death. His entire existence had been aimless and pointless. If someone was watching over him, it was someone with a sadistic sense of humor. "My father was killed in a freak car accident when I was four," he said accusingly. "Where's the meaning in that?"

Then he froze and gasped. Suddenly he could remember it all, every single moment of his life, as clearly as if it had happened earlier this very day. His memory was perfect. He relived the crash, the endless hours of surgery, the doctor telling him that his father was dead. It played in his head on endless loop for what felt like an eternity, until he learned to hold the recollections at a distance and examine them from a slightly detached vantage point. He remembered how the dread certainty that his life was over had settled on him that day, and he remembered how the police officer had assured him that everything would be all right.

But nothing had been all right. His father's death had set him adrift in the world, all alone. His first orphanage had barely been real to him. Beige walls, the stern frown of the headmistress, the counselors who prodded him and made him talk to them…all he had wanted was to be left alone. He didn't form any attachments while he was there. What was the point, when they could vanish at any moment? Matt had understood the impermanence of all things at a very young age.

He had escaped into video games. They occupied his time and staved off boredom, and, perhaps most importantly of all, they were always there waiting for him exactly as he had left them. Games wouldn't abandon him. On the glowing screen, life was completely on his terms.

And so things had remained for the next five years. Until he met Mello.

Now Matt smiled, his train of bitter memories completely derailed. Mello had changed everything. With his golden hair and irrepressible personality, he had pierced through the barrier that separated Matt from everyone else. Mello had become a part of his world, had turned _his_ world into _their _world. These times, too, were now fresh and vivid in his mind. Sneaking around Wammy's House late at night, causing trouble; confessing their real names to each other; their first kiss. These were powerful memories, _good _memories. Mello had made him happy.

For a time, anyway. Even that had fallen apart near the end. The pressures of Wammy's House had warped Mello. Years of struggling to be Number One had turned him into something Matt couldn't cope with anymore. He had been forced to leave the House and his best friend behind for the sake of his own sanity.

_Leave them behind?_ The implications of his thoughts caught up with him and he guffawed. Another way to phrase that would be to say he had _run away. That_ was what he had done when he had exited Wammy's House without even telling Mello why. He hadn't even _tried_ to make things right between them, he had just turned tail and fled. And he had still been running when he started using drugs afterwards. In fact, he realized, that was also what he had done when he lost himself in video games after his father's death. He had never wanted to deal with painful things head-on, he had always just pretended that they weren't even there. There was a common theme here, a pattern, and it was cowardice. He could see that now.

Funny, how being dead gave a completely different perspective on things. Matt hung his head in shame.

Yet despite that, Mello had come and found him again. They had been reunited, years later, and Matt had had a second chance at happiness.

_How did he find you?_ asked the other. It had been so long since it had last spoken that Matt had all but forgotten it was even there.

He smiled mirthlessly. Mello had admitted that it was no coincidence that they had both wound up in L.A. at the same time. Matt knew the exact moment that he had slipped up and left a traceable trail. When he had moved from New York to L.A., he had accessed his Wammy's House trust money in order to buy a car. He had been in a hurry, and had made the erroneous assumption that nobody was still looking for him. He hadn't covered his tracks as well as he should have. That was how Mello had found him.

_That's all there was to it?_

The question made Matt pause. He had never put too much thought into it, since Mello's finding him had obviously turned out for the better. But now that he was considering it, he realized that a lot more must have gone into finding him than just a blip on his money trail in New York. For example, he'd used cash all the way across the country, then changed identities and the plates on his car when he arrived in L.A. Mello had no way of knowing he had even gone west. How had he followed that move?

And that wasn't even the biggest question. Mello had begun in _Winchester._ He had first had to trace Matt back to the States.

Now that he was thinking about the practicalities involved, Matt realized that Mello must have spent a staggering number of hours searching for him. And it wasn't as if Mello had nothing else to do—he was also hunting Kira and fighting his never-ending battle with Near. The majority of the Kira case was Japan-centric, and yet Mello had set up his base of operations in L.A. Where Matt was.

Mello had made incredible sacrifices for them to be together.

A sob tore its way free from Matt's throat. He couldn't believe that he had never put the picture together before. Mello had done _all that,_ and yet, the first time they had met up again after years apart, Matt had chosen to lose his number and leave him hanging. He'd been intimidated by the company Mello was keeping and confused by his own mixed feelings about the past, and he hadn't been able to see the bigger picture—which was how much he loved Mello and how desperately unhappy he was without him. Matt had done nothing to help his own case. Mello was the one who had fought for them—had fought for _him. _Mello had given him even a _third _chance. It wasn't until after the blonde's brush with death in a burning warehouse that Matt had let him back into his life. Soon after that, like clockwork, Mello had made him happy again.

The tears on Matt's cheeks had nothing to do with his death. "All of the good parts of my life were with Mello," he whispered as realization dawned. If he made a Venn diagram with the largest circle labeled "Matt's life," the smaller circles "parts that were good" and "time spent with Mello" would overlap perfectly. The rest would be labeled, "times that sucked" and "times Matt was on his own"—also a pair of identical sets.

From the vantage point of death, he could see the truth in stark clarity. Mello had picked up what pieces of him still remained after years of addiction and hopelessness, and reassembled them. It was a task so daunting that even Matt himself had shied away from it, but Mello had faced it head-on. Mello had healed him.

"I'm such a pathetic idiot," he exclaimed miserably. "He did so much for me and I didn't deserve any of it!"

He felt, rather than heard, the other's query. _Then why did he do it?_

Matt stilled. "That's a good question," he said, rubbing salty liquid off of his cheeks. Mello didn't need him. He was, speaking honestly, any hot-blooded gay man's wet dream. He could have anybody he wanted; there was no good reason for him to go to such great lengths for Matt. "Hell if I know. He just fell for me at a young age and he was too stuck to move on and find someone better." Matt had gotten him through sheer luck alone, and the truth was that Mello would have been better off with someone who matched him better. Someone with passion and determination, not a junkie gamer who had never done anything with his life. He hadn't deserved Mello at all.

He wallowed in the morass of those thoughts for a long time before a different one started to make itself heard. The new thought reminded him that he had asked Mello that million-dollar question while he was alive, and Mello had actually had an answer for him. He had said it was because Matt was the only person who could handle him.

That's right—that's right! Matt's eyes widened in shock. He _had _handled Mello. He couldn't count the number of times he'd had a gun shoved in his face or taken a black eye from the blonde when he was in a foul mood. He'd had to talk him down from the heights of manic rage and out of the blackest pits of depression. As beautiful and brilliant as Mello was, he had his dark side. It took a special constitution to be with a man like him, and _Matt had it_.

The realization left him slightly stunned. How had he forgotten about that? They had discussed it more than once while he was still alive, yet it hadn't sunk in. No—that wasn't quite it. He had never been able to bring himself to believe it. On some deep level, he had been so convinced that he didn't deserve Mello's attention that all suggestions to the contrary had slid in one ear and out the other.

But now he could see it clearly. He _had _pulled weight in their relationship. He had kept Mello somewhere near equilibrium. The blonde had been incredibly unbalanced during his time in the Mafia when Matt wasn't there to help him. He had done some unspeakable things, things he would never forgive himself for. It was only when Matt was there to stay his hand that he had any sense of perspective. Matt _had _contributed. He _had _done something worthwhile.

The knowledge washed over him like a cleansing wave, lifting a burden of self-hatred from his shoulders that had been such a part of him that he hadn't even realized it was there. It left him breathless, light as a feather, laughing in exhilaration. _He was worthwhile._ Mello's devotion to him was a measure of that worth. They were a matched pair, not an unimaginably perfect being taking pity on a charity case. He had mattered. He, Mail Jeevas, had done things nobody else could. He had made a difference in Mello's life, and he had made a difference in the Kira case. He had sacrificed his very _life_ to stop the bastard, and if he hadn't been caught as a result of his and Mello's actions yet, then it was only a matter of time. He had actually made a positive contribution to the world.

_Yes,_ answered the other voice, and Matt could feel that it was proud. This was the realization that it had been prodding him towards this whole time.

Tears poured down his cheeks. "I never realized—Mello tried to tell me so many times!" He would say, "Matt, I want you to know that when I call you beautiful—" or smart, or worthy, or wonderful, "—that I really mean it, and I'm not just saying it to try to please you." Matt had nodded and said that he understood, but he hadn't.

Now he did, at long last. He was hardly perfect, but he had his good points. He deserved the happiness he had found in life.

That thought startled him yet again. He had always thought of his life as generally painful and unpleasant, but the truth was that there _had _been happiness there. He had had a father who loved him. Only for four years, granted, which was nowhere near long enough, but many people didn't even have that. And he had found love, with Mello. True love.

Matt shook his head in bemusement. He had always scoffed at phrases like "true love" in life, because who could say what made one love more "true" than another? But now, looking back on the entirety of his relationship with Mello, he realized that it was something that very few people got to experience. Mello had crossed oceans and continents for him. Mello had hunted him for years to fulfill a promise made at age fourteen that he would follow him anywhere. He had come and rescued him during his darkest hour, like some scarred, violent inversion of Prince Charming. Prince Mello, with shiny leather in place of shining armor and a motorcycle instead of a proud steed. Their love was almost like some gritty modern fairy tale, adapted for the twenty-first century by filling it with guns, drugs and computers, and replacing the damsel in distress with a second man.

Matt laughed softly. He had never conceived of their relationship in those terms while he was alive, but now he could see the truth of it. Their love was the sort of thing that ballads were written about, the stuff young girls dreamed of. He had been damned lucky to experience that.

When he looked back now, Matt saw everything in a different light. He had done some things he was ashamed of, but he had also had moments that made him very proud. He had lived through many painful times, yes; but in amongst the years of addiction and suffering had been an epic love that spanned the years and the miles.

There had been bad, and there had also been good. But that was just life. He could see that now.

The moment that thought crystallized in his mind, everything shifted. The sensation of timelessness lifted, and Matt found himself sitting on solid ground. It was still gray and featureless, but there was now a discernable horizon and sky.

_You have arrived, _the other informed him_._

In front of him was suddenly the Gate. Matt knew that on the other side was somewhere else, and that it was a good somewhere. He knew he was meant to go there. He even knew, in a burst of insight that shook him to the core, that his father was there somewhere, and so was the mother he didn't even remember.

But even so, he hesitated.

"Mello," he said simply, knowing that the other would know what he meant.

_Very well._ The gray pulled back from a circle in the ground in front of him and Matt found himself peering into the world from a bird's-eye view. It took him a second to make sense of what he was seeing, but he cried out in dismay when he did. Mello's body burning in a church. "No! He's dead too?"

There was acknowledgement. _His part in this is finished, just as yours is._

Matt clenched his eyes shut and wept silently for his friend. Mello should have had a lot of good years left to him yet. "How long…?"

_It has been several hours since you died. _

That was startling enough to interrupt Matt's grief for a moment. "It felt like much longer than that."

_It was, for you. _

Matt took a deep breath and resolutely forced his tears to stop. "If Mel's dead, does that mean he's coming here too?"

Now he sensed hesitation from the other for the first time. _There is no guarantee that he will ever make it here. _Attached to that statement in a wordless form was the knowledge that whether or not Mello arrived rested solely on the blonde, and not on any outside forces.

Matt shook his head. "If there's even the slightest possibility, he'll make it," he declared. "You don't know him like I do." He glanced at the Gate and hesitated. It beckoned him. His father beckoned him. But the Gate would still be there a few hours from now. "I can't go without him." He sat down stubbornly on the ground. "I'll wait."

The other accepted his decision without argument, and suddenly Matt knew that he was about to be left alone. "Hey, hang on!" he exclaimed. He felt the other's attention on him. "Um, about that whole "higher authority" thing…"

It understood his question, even though he couldn't formulate it in words. _I will try to answer. You are very smart, so perhaps you can understand. _

It started with an atom. Then it was many atoms coming together to make a molecule, then many molecules evolving over time into more and more complex systems until it was a cell. Then the cell became an organ, then an animal, then an ecosystem; and then, in the same way that cells combined to make an organ, it was all of the ecosystems in the world coming together to form—

Matt collapsed backwards on the ground, reeling. It was too much for his mind to hold at once. But for a second there, he had seen it—overarching patterns that were at work in the world, forces that grew organically out of the complexity of everything in it. It wasn't a "God" who reigned down from above, per se—although Matt realized that had Mello seen the same thing, he probably would have interpreted it as such—but something larger than just the individual. He found that knowledge oddly comforting.

He realized that he was alone now. The Gate was still there, but Matt let it be for the moment. He gazed down through the window into the world, at the blazing ruins of the church, and smiled fondly. How appropriate, for Mello to die in blazes, in the house of God. "We can have a great big theological debate about what I just saw when you get here," he murmured. He settled himself comfortably and prepared to wait for as long as need be.


	2. Mello's side

Mello knew that he was dying the moment his chest tightened.

He wasn't surprised. This had been a long time in coming. In a way, it was almost a relief for the moment to arrive, just so that it wasn't hanging over his head anymore. There were no more decisions to make, no more desperate actions to take. All that remained was to clutch his rosary and pray.

Agony radiated outwards from his heart. This, too satisfied a certain morbid curiosity. He had often wondered what it felt like to be killed by Kira; now he knew. It was more painful than he had imagined.

As his fingers went numb and the rosary dropped onto the steering wheel, he tried to think of some fitting last words. Something proud, even if it would only be spoken in the confines of his own mind. But what won out, as the world finally faded before his eyes, was fear.

He was about to find out what the fires of Hell were like firsthand.

There was the sensation of being sucked backwards out of his body, and then everything vanished. For a long, horrible moment, Mello drifted in black, formless limbo. Dread consumed him as he waited to land in the pits of the underworld.

He kept waiting. The moment stretched, and he eventually realized that it wasn't just his perception playing tricks on him - time was actually passing. He hadn't been transported instantaneously to Hell.

As soon as that thought popped into his head, he perceived that he had a body. He started. That was impossible, he was dead! But he could feel arms and legs, a torso. His breathing was audible. It dawned on him that he was curled up in a fetal position with his eyes squeezed tightly shut. For a moment he kept them closed, fearing that opening them would reveal Hellfires and end this brief respite, but then the need to _know _overwhelmed that.

He opened his eyes.

Dirt. He was lying on dry, cracked dirt that stretched away from him on all sides. The desolate ground was featureless until it terminated in a ring of craggy mountains an indeterminate distance away. Low-lying clouds covered the sky, and a cold breeze stirred dust from the ground and sucked warmth from his naked body.

He uncurled and sat up, blinking in bafflement tinged with fear. This wasn't Hell, but it certainly wasn't Purgatory or Heaven, either. He was at a loss. "Where am I?" he whispered hoarsely.

_You are here._

The voice came from nowhere and everywhere. Mello froze in place. In front of him, one of the cracks in the ground was glowing. Light welled up from it and coalesced into something human-shaped, but made of pure radiance. Mello stared.

Then he remembered himself. He quickly averted his gaze and fell to his knees, reaching instinctively for a rosary that was no longer there. When he came up empty, he crossed himself and frantically breathed a prayer instead.

_Please do not do that. You do not have to kneel or avert your eyes._

Mello stopped mid-incantation and dared to peek at the being's knees. "But…aren't you an angel?" he asked in a hushed tone.

_Among other things, _came the answer. _An angel with a very specific purpose, one could say. But I do not outrank you, so please stand. _

Cautiously, Mello did so. The angel's glow had dimmed enough that it was no longer painful to look at. "What specific purpose?" he asked.

The angel's face had taken on enough definition to be vaguely masculine now. Mello stared in rapt fascination as he opened his mouth. Light emanated from inside of it. "To prepare you for what comes next."

Mello shivered with a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the wind. He had to swallow hard before he could ask the next question. "What…what does come next?"

"I do not know the answer to that yet," the angel replied. "Your judgment is in progress."

Those words sent dread cascading through him. These were probably his last few moments as a free man. God would certainly condemn a sinner such as himself to Hell.

"How long?" he asked around a tongue gone dry.

"I do not know the answer to that, either."

Mello sat down on the ground and hugged his knees, trying futilely to retain some warmth. He had to laugh at the irony—soon he would be ready to give anything for a breath of cool air. "I know what comes next," he said softly.

"Do you?" questioned the angel. "That is interesting indeed, because I do not."

Mello looked up at him morosely. "Do you know the things I've done?" he asked.

The angel nodded. "I am familiar with your life."

He looked away. "Then you must know what God's judgment of me is going to be."

"Of course I cannot predict the future with certainty, but it is likely to be favorable."

Mello's head snapped up, his eyes wide. "What?"

"Your faith has always been strong," said the angel. "God rewards his faithful. Actually, I believe that you will be given automatic entrance to Heaven. You have nothing to worry about."

Mello gaped. Hearing the angel say that so casually left him stunned. He couldn't believe it was so easy.

He should have been thrilled. He should have been rejoicing, glorying in the knowledge that he had just dodged the biggest bullet in the universe. But instead he felt a cold knot in his stomach.

"What's the problem?" the angel asked him. "That is what you want, is it not?"

"Well—yes! Yes, of course!" Obviously he _wanted _to go to Heaven. What rational person wouldn't? But despite the angel's words, Mello couldn't bring himself to believe that it would actually happen.

"Why not?" asked the other being, raising his eyebrows. "You have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, have you not?"  
"What? Yes!" exclaimed Mello. "That's never been in question!"

"Is that not the main tenet of your religion?"

"Yes! But—but I—" He ducked his head, unable to meet the angel's eye. "I didn't repent my sins in life." And his life had certainly been full of sins. He had been so preoccupied with the major ones that he had neglected to even pay attention to the more minor offenses, but the truth was that they permeated his existence. Every chocolate bar was an act of gluttony, and he had never regretted so much as a single one of them. Greed had been his daily occupation as he fought to the top of the Mafia, and pride—pride defined his way of life. What else did it mean to set his sights on being Number One?

Next was the matter of lust. Mello had yielded to that urge on innumerable occasions, and his sin was compounded because it had always been _homosexual _lust. Worse, he couldn't blame those trespasses on the weakness of the flesh. He had made a conscious decision to ignore what the bible had to say on that subject, and had never looked back. Every single sexual act had constituted open rebellion on his part.

Mello covered his face with his hands and moaned softly. He had barely begun enumerating his extensive catalogue of sins—starting with the most minor, no less—and already he had recalled countless times that he had knowingly flouted God's word. He had put his own selfish desires above divine law on many occasions. What right did he have to call himself a Catholic?

The angel sat down across from him, startling him out of his thoughts. He rested his chin on his fist and contemplated him with an amused grin. "Son, how strict do you think your Heavenly Father is? Do you think He will condemn you to Hell for acting on your human appetites when He, in fact, made you that way?"

For a moment, Mello was too taken aback to respond. Matt used to say things like that to him when he was making the argument that religion made no sense. To hear it from one of the heavenly host was…disconcerting, to say the least.

Truthfully, though, Mello had never felt that lust and homosexuality should be as high on the list of sins as many made them out to be. The angel's words seemed to confirm that. Mello realized that he was essentially being handed a get out of jail free card for his entire sex life.

It felt strangely surreal. He kept expecting dire consequences, and they kept failing to appear. He couldn't push away the nagging sensation that this was wrong, all wrong. But he had an _angel _telling him he shouldn't feel guilty. There was no arguing with that. He should be able to recall his relationship with Matt without a shred of negative feeling, now.

He couldn't. Thinking about Matt brought buckets full of guilt pouring down on him.

It had nothing to do with both of them being men. It had everything to do with Matt being _dead. _He'd been killed in Mello's scheme. His blood was on Mello's hands as surely as if he'd pulled the trigger himself. He shrank into himself and covered his face with his hands, overcome with remorse.

"Everyone has to die sometime," the angel reminded him gently.

Anger raced through Mello. He leapt to his feet and whirled, pointing an accusatory finger at the angel. "You—how the hell can you say that? Don't you dare make light of Matt's death! You keep making excuses why I shouldn't feel guilty, but I should! Do you even know the terrible shit I put Matt through when we were alive? Getting him killed is just the beginning—" He broke off in a sob and turned his face away. "Shit!"

He had done unforgivable things to Matt. The countless times he had raised his hand against him during fits of temper was only the beginning. The truth was that Mello had come within a hair's breadth of breaking him, and more than once. His careless cruelty had driven Matt away from Wammy's House at fourteen, out into a cold world that he was woefully unprepared for. The weight of at least some of the suffering Matt had experienced in the next few years rested squarely on Mello's shoulders.

Then, to make matters worse, Mello had nearly repeated the same mistakes as an adult! He had wanted Matt to belong to him completely, had wanted it so badly that he could taste it—he shook his head and shivered. He still could. But he had foolishly gone about it by trying to crush Matt's stubborn spirit and force him into obedience.

He had been so blind. That spirit was exactly what it was that Mello so desperately needed in him. Yet he had held on to Matt so tightly that he had nearly destroyed the very thing he wanted to keep. He had driven Matt back to the needle before it was over, and he had been so wrapped up in himself that he hadn't even _noticed _until it was almost too late.

The image of Matt stoned out of his mind plagued him now. The guilt was almost worse this time around than it had been when Mello first realized what was going on right under his nose. Now he asked himself a question he had rarely dared to contemplate during life: could it be that Matt's perpetual hunt for oblivion had something to do with his best friend and lover waging war against his individuality for years?

He snorted bitterly. No, the real question was: Was there any way it could _not? _

"You see?" he demanded savagely of the angel. "You see what I did to him? I—ugh!" He broke off, disgusted with himself. He was itching for something to punch, but the landscape was featureless. "I used to think I _saved _him!" he howled. "I'm such a—a fucking narcissist!" Matt used to call him that from time to time, and he had always dismissed it. Now, he suddenly saw in stark clarity what his friend had meant. "Sitting there patting myself on the back for all the "good" I'd done him, when I'm the one who caused the problems in the first place!" He had driven him to the very edge, and his efforts to make things right had been far too little, far too late.

Matt would have been so much better off if they had never gotten in contact again after their Wammy's House days. Mello wished he had not been so intent on finding him. It had all seemed to make sense at the time, but in retrospect it looked ludicrous. Matt had gone halfway around the world to avoid him. In his egomaniacal frenzy, he had closed that distance in order to inflict himself upon the redhead again.

It didn't stop at Matt, though. Mello had stepped on many other people during his life, and they weren't any less important just because they didn't happen to be the man he loved. He had used anyone convenient to him while he was building his power base, then tossed them aside when they were no longer useful. He had simply knocked down anyone who got in his way, regardless of how much it twisted up their lives as a result. He had even killed his enemies. Matt's was not the only blood on his hands. He had murdered dozens; hundreds, if he counted the ones that had been killed indirectly as a result of his actions.

Mello hugged himself wretchedly. It was hard to face the truth of what he had done, what he had been. In life he had always been able to turn his mind away from thoughts like these, either through rationalization or stubbornness or, if all else failed, a bottle of whiskey. Now he no longer had that luxury.

"If you feel so guilty about it, why did you do it?" asked the angel. "What was it all for?"

The answer to that was obvious. "Number One," he whispered. "It was all to be Number One. All of it."

"Number One," repeated the angel. "Why does that matter?"

"Why does—" Mello spluttered indignantly for a second. "Everything! It's _everything!"_ The angel raised an eyebrow skeptically, and Mello shook his head in frustration. "You don't understand. You _can't_ understand. You don't know what it's like to be a Successor to L." Someone who had not been through the Wammy's House machine would never comprehend the overwhelming importance of being Number One. It was fulfillment, happiness, fame and fortune. It brought meaning to a life that was empty without it. It was The Dream.

Most would have chosen to give up their ambitions if the alternative was a life of crime. A Successor couldn't do that. For the children of Wammy's House, failure was synonymous with death.

"It's all Near's fault!" he exclaimed. Just the mention of the name brought with it such a surge of hatred and frustration that Mello could no longer speak. Near had taken _everything _away from him when he became Number One. It was Near who had driven him into the life he had led as an adult. Near, with his damnably perfect memory and his cold, dead eyes. Mello _couldn't _give up and let him win; it would have destroyed him. It might be wrong of him to feel that way, but it was still the truth. He could no more change it than he could grow to six feet tall or turn his eyes brown. It was part of who he was.

His only choices were to keep fighting Near, or roll over and die. It was the struggle for bare survival that had driven him to claw his way up from homeless street trash to right-hand man of the most powerful Mafia Boss in the world. Mello had knowingly chosen to lower himself into a life of sin many times. Each time, he had done it with certainty in his heart that God wanted him to find a way through whatever challenge he was facing.

Now he saw the ridiculousness of that notion. How could _God _want him to kill, or to blackmail or kidnap or threaten people? How could God_ want_ him to sacrifice another life for his own?

No, God had nothing to do with it, that was plain as day now. The real driving force all along had been nothing more than Mello's own ego.

"Was it worth it?" the angel asked.

"Worth it…?" repeated Mello dazedly. His stomach sank like a stone as he realized the answer to that question. "No," he said bitterly. "In the end, Near beat me. I lost." He closed his eyes. "I _lost, _and for _that _I got Matt killed, and hurt so many others—"

He broke off. Suddenly he could see in his mind's eye the whole network of lives that he had affected negatively, from those he had killed all the way down to those he had merely inconvenienced. Every single one of those people had been sacrificed so that Mello could chase his dreams.

For the first time ever, Mello saw a clear picture of himself. He was a parasite. All he knew how to do was use others to satisfy his needs. He had fed off of hundreds, even _thousands _of people so that he could live, and in the end, he had even consumed and destroyed the man he loved.

A sob tore its way free of his throat. _This _was why he could never go to heaven. His very nature was as ugly as the scar that marred his face, that summed up so much about him. If God chose to pardon him for his sins and open the pearly gates to him, he would ruin Heaven's sacred harmony with his twisted desires. His mere presence would desecrate that holiest of places.

Tears streamed down his face. Mello collapsed onto his hands and knees and rested his forehead on the ground. It _hurt _to face what he was. He couldn't even bring himself to dread his impending sentence anymore. Hell was what he deserved; he had earned it.

He felt no comfort when the angel gently touched his shoulder. "Please calm down. All is not hopeless."

"Liar!" spat Mello, his voice cracking as he wept.

"I am not. You repented your biggest sins."

Mello froze, cold dread cutting through even his sorrow to paralyze him. At the angel's words, his mind was drawn inevitably to his biggest sins. Murders.

Suddenly his mind was full of death. Memories of the times he had killed flattened all other thoughts. To his horror, each was as vivid as the day it had happened. He saw human brains staining a wall in a gruesome flower, felt blood splattering his face, hot and sticky. He rolled to his knees and retched, every bit as sickened as he had been by the actual events.

But his mind kept going, despite his best efforts to blank it. It was as if the angel's words had unlocked a floodgate. Mello was inundated with memory after awful memory. Violence he had perpetrated on others, even innocents and children. The tears of friends and family when their loved ones were taken from them prematurely. Lives that were twisted and broken because of him. Each one replayed in his mind with crystal clarity, and the guilt was so intense it felt like knives piercing his gut.

There was no more dirt, no more angel, no more mountains. Mello floated in the darkness with only his sins as company. They pursued him through the void, haunting him, forcing him to relive them. His fingers squeezed triggers, his knuckles connected with soft flesh and cartilage, his boots crushed toes. Blood flowed freely from the wounds he left. He stared into terrified face after terrified face, each time ignoring cries of pain and pleas for mercy.

The grisly show always ended in the same place: Matt's death. The image of Matt's body, bullet-riddled and blood-soaked, a cigarette dangling from lifeless lips.

It was unbearable. Mello felt himself tearing apart in the face of the overwhelming weight of his many sins. He tried to scream, but there was no sound. He tried to close his eyes, but he couldn't. He tried to run, but he had no legs. There was no escape.

Understanding came to him in his last second of coherent thought. Judgment had already been rendered. No dogmatic fire and brimstone awaited him; rather, his punishment was to face his sins over and over again for all of eternity.

He was already in his own personal Hell.

Thought fled. All that remained was a chaotic nightmare.

Then there was nothing

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There was nothing

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There was nothing

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Then there was _something._

It came out of nowhere. Some tiny spark of rebellion, long forgotten but not dead, expanded from a pinpoint of light to a supernova in a fraction of a second. He seized it, and he _fought. _

He remembered that he was Mello. He had a mind, a will and a soul.

The thing that had saved him had words. He reached for his voice with all of his strength and tore it free from the oblivion that had swallowed it. "I had to! I had no choice!" he screamed.

The world broke open. There was sky, and there were mountains, and then he hit the ground with bone-jarring force. He writhed, completely disoriented. "No choice! I had to! I—"

The angel's hand pressed into his chest, pinning him to the ground. Mello stilled immediately. "Welcome back," he said. "I was afraid that I had lost you permanently. Please don't go away again."

Mello panted, willing his thudding heart to slow down as he tried to collect his wits enough to figure out what had happened. He had been…elsewhere. Lost. He shuddered. He had found his way back, although he couldn't for the life of him figure out how. Some part of him had stayed alive enough to remember that there was more to the story than just his sins.

"I had to," he gasped, seeking the angel's eyes imploringly. "Matt's death. I had to do it. I had no choice."

"No choice?" echoed the angel. "How can that be? Couldn't you have kept the plan from him and snuck out that morning by yourself?"

That thought made Mello gasp. The idea of _hiding _something that big from Matt left him cold. How would Matt have felt if he woke up this morning alone only to turn on the news see Mello kidnapping Takada? It seemed like almost a worse betrayal than getting him killed. "No. Lying to him was out of the question. Besides, the plan needed two people."

"Then why not hire someone else and leave your precious Matt out of it?"

Mello snorted. "I wish I could have!" he exclaimed. "First, he never would have let me get away with it. But more importantly, I couldn't trust that role to just anybody. It had to be someone I could count on, someone with the brains and the driving skills and the mettle to handle it. It needed to be Matt."

"You could have waited and thought up a better plan," suggested the angel.

"I fucking couldn't!" exclaimed Mello, shaking the angel's hand off and getting to his feet. "Near's going to be meeting with Kira in _two days! _It was now or never, don't you get that?"

"Yes," said the angel. "But why didn't you choose never? That seems like it would have been the most sensible option for a man in your position. All you had to do was sit back and wait while Near's fatal mistake got him killed. Then you would have been Number One, and you and Matt could have taken as long as you wanted to craft the perfect plan to catch Kira."

"I couldn't do that either!" exclaimed Mello, pacing agitatedly. "Shit, you don't get it at all." He shook his head. "Look. You don't understand, because you've never faced Kira. But I have_. _He is _dangerous. _He had already killed L. I mean, _L!" _He broke off for a moment, unable to find the right words to convey his meaning. "Do you understand the caliber of mind that L had? Do you have any idea what it takes to _beat _him? Kira _killed_ him. And he damn near killed me, too!"His hand rose unconsciously to touch his scar. "It took Near and I _five years_ between the two of us to force a showdown with Kira. If I let Near get killed, how long would it have been before I could recreate that opportunity? Another five years? Ten years?" He glared. "And keep in mind that the world fights him less and less with each passing day. Governmental support has already dwindled to almost nothing. Chances of stopping him only go down more as more time passes!

"Plus, what would happen if I failed?" He hated to acknowledge the possibility out loud, but pretense seemed pointless now that he was dead. "There's no guarantee that I would beat Kira. He knew my real name, he had the upper hand already…if he managed to kill me before I could get to him, there would be no one left to fight him. If he succeeded…" Mello's lips twisted downwards at the grim image of a New World where Kira reigned as God. "No. I couldn't let that happen. I couldn't let a chance to catch him slip by, not when it might be the _only _chance. I _had _to do something, even if it meant sending Matt to his death. For the sake of the—"

Mello stopped. His vision swam, and he had to sit down before dizziness could overtake him. _For the sake of the world,_ that was what he was going to say. For the sake of the world.

Not for his ego. Not so that he could be Number One. Not so that he could beat Near. Not for _him _at all. For everyone else.

He had given up everything so that the people of the world didn't have to live under Kira's twisted reign of terror. He had allowed Near to beat him. He had willingly gone to his death alone and in disgraced anonymity. He had even sacrificed the love of his life to that end.

A strangled sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob escaped him. He could see it now. Matt had made the decision to participate of his own free will, fully aware of the consequences. Mello had let him get killed, but it wasn't out of selfishness. Selfish would have been whisking Matt off to a private island to live out their days in domestic bliss while the rest of the world went to Hell. Selfish would have been doing nothing and letting Near die. What Mello had actually done today in getting Matt killed was to sacrifice his most precious thing, his best friend and lover, for the sake of the world at large.

It had, in fact, been the most selfless thing Mello had ever done.

A huge weight of guilt lifted off of his shoulders all at once. Matt's blood was not on his hands, and he wasn't a black-hearted parasite. He had done something very noble today, and so had Matt. They had both died as martyrs.

It had felt like a bitter death at the time, sitting alone and hopeless in the shell of a church while listening to the details of Matt's death over the radio, but it _wasn't. _It was a glorious death.

Mello lifted his eyes and met the angel's gaze, and the other being was smiling. "You've finally realized it."

"Yeah," said Mello softly. "I did something very good." It didn't erase his many sins, but at least it proved that he wasn't purely evil.

He could now reflect on his actions during life without flinching. The bad was still there, but it wasn't all that was there. Mello had changed many things for the better while he was alive. Working with the Mafia had been a sinful choice, to be certain, but ending long-running family feuds in L.A. and New York City had saved hundreds of lives. The girls in the whorehouses were no longer treated as slaves under Mello's watch. He had negotiated with countless people whose problematic nature other gangsters would have taken care of with a bullet. There was actually a lot more gray area in his life than he had ever appreciated before.

Much of it he had only done because he had to. Much of it had been unpalatable to him. He had never regretted his decisions, because he was only doing what he had to do, but remorse…there had been plenty of that. He didn't _enjoy _living that life.

Except when he did. Mello's cheeks flushed as he acknowledged the lie in his statement. He had reveled in the power he had earned during life. He had gloried in material riches and fed off of being waited on hand and foot. He had exacted revenge on his enemies, and thoroughly enjoyed rubbing their noses in the dirt and gloating about it. He could hardly claim that his motivations in life had been pure.

And yet, he had made the ultimate sacrifice. There were many times that he had been kind and caring. And with Matt—

Matt. A cascade of bittersweet memories broke over him, and he closed his eyes. He loved Matt. He knew he hadn't been an easy man to live with, but his love was true. And Matt had loved him back just as much. As a man, as an independent adult of sound mind and body, Matt had come back to him. Matt had _chosen _to be with him. They had been happy together.

Happy. That's right, Matt had been happy before the end.

Mello's eyes widened. During life, he and Matt had agreed to stop playing the blame game about their long time apart. They had decided that each had wronged the other, and so it was a wash. But Mello had never truly been able to let the guilt go. He had always been convinced, on some level, that Matt was better off without him.

But now the stark contrast of Matt as he had been when Mello first walked back into his life and Matt as he had been just before the end popped into his mind, and he gaped. They were quite different. The first was lost and fragmented, the second…happy. Alive. Mello _had_ helped Matt. He had saved Matt just as much as Matt had saved him, and he should feel good about that.

He laughed as another layer of guilt peeled back. He and Matt had experienced true love together. Mello knew with complete certainty that as long as he could feel that, he _wasn't_ irredeemable.

He realized with a start that it had been _that _that drew him out of the darkest place. Some part of him had never forgotten his love for Matt, no matter how overwhelmed by guilt the rest of him had been. Some part of him had always known it was true. Matt's love had saved him.

He looked up at the angel with a wistful sigh. "I did so much selfish, petty, hateful shit, and then I turned around and fell in love and sacrificed my life…I make no sense." He shook his head in confusion. "What the hell am I? Bad guy or good guy?"

"You are Mello," answered the angel calmly.

That was when understanding dawned. The question he had asked was the very judgment that God was in the process of making right now. He was adding up the sum of all of Mello's actions, thoughts and motivations. He would be given credit for the times he had tried to do good, but he wouldn't be spared or pitied for the times he had acted like Satan himself. Whichever way the scales tipped more heavily, that would determine his destination. Hell, or Purgatory with the hope of eventual parole to Heaven.

He bit his lip. Which would He choose? Were the weight of his many sins too heavy?

Mello's lips twisted into half of a bemused smile. "I killed all but four members of the SPK, and drove the President to suicide. I got Kira caught." He looked at the angel imploringly. "Did I…did I do more harm than good in life?"

"That depends," replied the angel. "How do define "good"? How do you define "harm"?"

Somehow, the angel's voice carried with it meanings deeper than the mere words. Mello understood immediately what he meant. Had uniting the Mafia been "good"? It had saved many lives, so yes—but then it had ultimately led to the deaths of all of Mello's close associates. Was that evil? Yes—but perhaps had they lived, they would have inflicted a reign of terror over the people of L.A. the moment Mello was out of the picture. He had helped take down Kira, but that would allow a host of more conventional serial killers to wreak havoc in his absence. Who could say that the criminal element wouldn't do more harm than Kira had in the long run? In the end, weighing the absolute merits of any action was a knotty puzzle.

All he would really have when he faced his maker was himself. His heart, his actions, his hopes and dreams and aspirations. There were many times that he had been proud and vain and selfish, but he had also done good works. He had made the best of the times that were given to him. He had fought hard, always striving to be the best he could be. He had made many difficult choices. Sometimes he had taken the only path available to him. Hell, sometimes he had been forced to create new paths out of thin air just to survive. He had been true to himself from the day he had walked out of Wammy's House until the moment his heart gave its final beat. He had lived and died as Mello.

In the end, he was proud of that. He had been the best person he could manage to be, and he had loved Matt in the best way he knew how. He was flawed and imperfect and his soul bore the stains of many sins, but he wasn't beyond redemption.

He got slowly to his feet. He felt calm, now. He was ready to receive God's judgment. His actions had led directly to Kira's downfall, and that achievement spoke for itself. The world needed people like him; he made things happen. Had he been another law-abiding L-clone like Near, Kira would still be at large.

He had done what needed to be done. If it meant he was condemned to Hell, then so be it. One lost soul seemed a fair price for ridding the world of a tyrant.

Mello set his jaw. He didn't know whether God would choose to give him a second chance or not. But he did know that at the very least, he could face Him with his head held high and accept His judgment like a man.

"It is done." The angel gestured, and the world split in half.

Light. Dazzling, pure, blinding light that surrounded him and filled him up completely. Acceptance. Forgiveness. _Love. _Overwhelming, all-consuming, perfect love.

Mello tumbled onto the ground, weeping with joy. For the first time, he really comprehended what "forgiveness" was. It meant that all of his flaws were seen and understood, and _he was loved anyway._

He saw the truth, now. God had forgiven him from the very beginning; he had merely had to open up his heart enough to receive it. The judgment he had been awaiting this whole time was _his own_.

He was finally able to answer the question of what he had been in life. He now knew what it meant to be full of emotions that ran the gamut from blackest hatred to purest love. He knew what it meant to have motivations that were deplorable and laudable and everything in between. It meant that he was human.

He wasn't purely evil, or purely good, or purely _anything. _He was a little bit of everything. He had made mistakes in life, but that was all right. He didn't have to be perfect all the time. He was human.

In the midst of his joy ran a thread of sorrow. He also realized now that there would be no Purgatory, no magical punishment imposed from above to erase his sins. They were a part of him in death as they had been in life; he would have to learn to live with them. He had a lot of amends to make.

Not the least of which were owed to Matt.

Mello started when his lover came to mind. He now saw how much Matt's love for him had in common with what he had just experienced. Matt had been forgiving him for years. He knew what Mello was, understood that he was sleeping with one of the most violent and dangerous men on the planet. He had never made excuses for his actions or taken a rose-tinted apologist's view. He had seen exactly what was there. He had loved Mello for precisely what he was; nothing more, nothing less.

Mello should have given him everything. He should have forgotten about Near and Kira so that they could build a happy life together. Instead, he always let Matt take second place to his ambitions. He had never given him the attention or the love that he deserved.

Mello stood and bowed his head somberly, apologizing silently. Then he remained there, giving a moment of solemn consideration to each person that he had wronged in life. Takada, who was surely just as dead as he was by now. Rod Ross, whose ambitions Mello had taken advantage of to further his own ends, and who had ultimately ended up dead because of it. All of the Mafia in L.A. who had been killed in Kira's raid. The President. Moretti. The list continued, ticking backwards through Mello's life until he reached—

Near. It all began with Near, the boy who had taken Number One from him.

The amount of hatred Mello had felt for him during life was astounding. Recalling it was jarring after the emotions that had filled him over the past several minutes.

Now he couldn't fathom why he had harbored so much negative feeling towards him for so long. He had been Number One, but what had that coveted position actually brought him?

Mello pictured Near as he had seen him last. Eighteen years old, but he still wore the same oversized pajamas that he had at Wammy's House. He was still just as frail and weak, still just as alone. The other members of the SPK had been present, but Near had been isolated even so. The model train that looped around him was almost a fence, keeping the others at bay. He was _alone. _Mello had known the instant he walked into that room that Near was more connected to _him _than to any of the people that worked with him on a daily basis.

Near wasn't loved. He wasn't famous, wasn't idolized, wasn't given whatever he wanted. He wasn't even _happy._ Mello had pursued him relentlessly, and yet Near had never actually been in possession of the things he wanted.

Now Mello realized with a start that he _had _beaten Near. Not in the Wammy's House Succession, perhaps, but in every important way. He had built an underground empire while Near built houses of cards. He had had hundreds, even thousands of people ready to do his bidding at the drop of a hat, while Near had Roger and a few other Wammy's House staff. Mello had loved Matt; Near had whittled finger puppets. Mello had lived life; Near had stayed in one room and experienced life through a video feed.

Near's unparalleled mind had earned him the position of L's Successor, but it came at a high price. He would never feel the rush of victory that Mello did when he cracked a case. He would never feel the heart-pounding excitement of tearing after someone on a bike through dense traffic. He would never experience true friendship. He would never love.

His mind was _all he had_. Mello should never have begrudged him the single thing that he possessed in the world. Near deserved his pity, not his hatred.

He felt it begin to unfold from inside of him, a great dark mass. It was a black demon that had choked him for years, tightening its stranglehold over his heart every day. Now, suddenly, it uncoiled from within him. All of the hate, the bitterness and jealousy and obsession he had felt for Near tore free from his mind and heart in one sweeping explosion.

He collapsed on the ground and screamed in agony. It had become such a large part of him that he hadn't even consciously realized it was there anymore, but it had invaded almost every corner of his being. Letting go of such a large part of himself was terrifying. He thought his entire soul might be torn apart.

It ebbed slowly. Mello got shakily to his hands and knees. He felt a thousand pounds lighter than he had just a few minutes ago, as if a poisoning sickness had been washed out of him. He felt reborn. He could now think of Near without any pain, and he realized with a shock that Near had never hated him. It had always been one-sided.

Mello smiled slightly as he fondly recalled a time when they had been friends. The next time he saw Near, he would greet him not as an enemy, but as a comrade.

He got to his feet. He now possessed a clarity of viewpoint that he had never experienced during life. Near had never taken Number One from him, he could see that now. Number One wasn't something tangible, like a position or a reward. Number One was a state of mind. It meant being satisfied with what he had accomplished, feeling that there were no more battles left to fight. It meant feeling like he had conquered everything.

It was a state that Mello could not have achieved in life. He was _never _satisfied to rest on his laurels, and he was always driven to do more. The thing that he had chased with such passion was an unreachable dream, a prize that didn't exist. The Holy Grail.

But in pursuing that goal, he had achieved everything that was important in life. He had made his mark on the world. He had helped to catch history's most infamous serial killer, a legacy that few could outstrip. He had found love.

Mello shook his head in awe. He had only lived for twenty years, but he had packed just about everything that life had to offer in that time. He had scrounged for food on the streets just to stay alive, dreaming about the luxury of a roof over his head. He had been so filthy rich that he didn't know what to do with his money. He had nearly frozen to death. He had lived in the lap of luxury. He had been high. He had had great sex, and also some humorously awkward sex. He had traveled the world. He had been shot and lived to tell the tale, and he'd shot others. He had killed. He had fought epic battles. He had hated passionately. He had had his heart broken. He had loved.

He had done everything there was to do. He, Mihael Keehl, had lived the entire human experience.

He had a few regrets, but who didn't? That, too, was part of being human.

And now he was going to have the one thing that he had never found in life: peace.

Tears sprang to his eyes. He would be at peace, at last. He could lay his demons to rest. He didn't have to fight anymore. He could finally live in harmony with the world around him instead of battling against it.

He wept again. An enormous burden had just been laid to rest. Mello felt like a brand new person.

When he looked up, the angel was there. He was smiling at him. "I think you have figured it out. You do not need me anymore."

Mello nodded jerkily. "Thank you," he said. "What happens now? Can I see Matt?" His stomach fluttered nervously. "I will see Matt again, won't I?"

"Yes."

Joy swept through Mello. A path opened up in front of him, a path filled with light, and he knew he would find Matt at the end of it. His heart leapt, and he wanted to race down it as fast as he could.

He stopped himself, though. There was something he needed to ask the angel first. "You referred to Catholicism as my religion. You called God _my _God. Does that mean that Catholicism isn't true?"

"I didn't say that," said the angel.

"Does that mean it _is _true?"

"I didn't say that either."

Nonplussed, Mello narrowed his eyes. "What are you other than an angel?"

"I am…" He hesitated. "That is hard to explain. Many things. Your mind interprets me according to what you are prepared to see."

Mello nodded, already comprehending that and thinking about the moment that he had felt God's forgiveness. "Did my mind just "interpret" that, or was that real?"

"Yes," said the angel. When Mello snorted in exasperation, he held up a hand placatingly. "I am not trying to be difficult. They are both true. It was real, and you experienced it according to what your mind can understand."

Mello bit his lip. "Did Matt feel that?" he asked quietly.

The angel shook his head. "He experienced something very different."

Mello hesitated. "Then—who's right? And don't blow me off! I need to know the answer to this. Which one of us saw the truth?"

The angel smiled. "Both of you."

Mello blinked as he digested this for a moment. He found it to be a strangely satisfying answer.

When he emerged from his reverie, the angel had gone. Matt awaited. Mello sprinted down the passage as fast as his legs would carry him.

He landed on clouds, and Matt was there. He was sitting, staring off into the distance and idly kicking his legs back and forth. But the moment Mello arrived, he jumped up and turned.

They ran to each other and closed in a crushing embrace. "Oh, Matt—I'm so sorry—I—"

Matt was talking too, overwhelmed by the same urge to confess. Mello bit his tongue and let Matt speak first, for once.

"I'm sorry, Mel," he said, his voice full of remorse. "I should never have left you at Wammy's House. It was the stupidest thing I've ever done."

There were tears on Mello's cheeks. "That's not true and you know it. I know you had to go. I—I wish I had treated you so much better! I wish I hadn't spent so much time on Kira, and on Near…I should have given you everything!" His voice broke with anguish.

Matt petted his hair. "You've given me more than enough," he said with a fond smile. "You saved my life, you know. More times than you realize."

Mello let go of Matt then, but only so that he could clasp his face between his hands and rest his forehead against Matt's. "Your love saved me. When things were really bad, that's what pulled me through."

A grin spread across Matt's face, and then he leaned forward and kissed him. When they broke, Matt regarded him intently. "Mello, you're…peaceful. I haven't seen you like this in a long, long time." He lifted one hand to caress his cheek. "You're healed, you know."

Mello gasped, his own hand flying up next to Matt's. His face was perfectly smooth. At the same moment, he realized that it went far deeper than his skin, and that Matt could see that, too.

He looked away shyly. "I…I don't know if I'm really Mello anymore. Maybe you should call me Mihael for now?" The words tumbled out of his mouth quickly with his nervousness. "I'm not the same person anymore…I don't know who I am anymore. Do you still like me?" The last came out so plaintively that he immediately felt silly.

Matt gave a low, breathy laugh. "Of course I do," he said softly. He caught Mello's eyes and held them with an intense gaze. "Mihael is the one I fell in love with at Wammy's House when I was…" He paused briefly to brush his lips across Mello's cheek. "…just nine years old. I like Mihael, all right."

"Then what about Mello? He hit you lot, and—"

"Mello too. I love them both. They're both _you, _you know." He kissed Mello one more time. "We'll figure out who you are together, okay?"

Mello found himself staring at his lover in amazement. Since when did _Matt _help _Mello _figure out who he was? It had always been the exact opposite in life. Mello had been the guide who kept Matt from getting lost in his own head. This represented a complete reversal of roles, and Mello was having some trouble wrapping his mind around this new Zen Matt.

"You've changed," he said in a hushed voice. He peered at him closely, and his eyes widened. "You're—oh God—you're whole! Matt, you're whole! I've—" He broke off in a sob as tears overwhelmed him again. "I've always wanted to see you whole. Always!"

There was a tinge of embarrassment in Matt's laugh this time. "Yeah…I guess I was messed up before I ever met you, huh. I hope it's not freaking you out too much."

He couldn't speak around his hitching breath, so he just shook his head. "It's wonderful," he managed after a minute. "It is."

"I'm glad. I mean…I'm really glad. Incidentally," drawled Matt, his tone suddenly much lighter. "Are you aware that you're naked?"

Mello straightened, eyes wide. "Yeah. How'd you get clothes?"

"Dunno," answered Matt with a shrug. "Just had 'em."

"I guess my mind interprets me as naked."

"What?"

"We see what we're prepared to see. The angel told me that."

Matt's eyes widened. "You saw an angel?"

"Yes. I'll tell you about it later. Matt." He looked up and caught Matt's eyes, his expression grave. "God spoke to me. Not in words, but He forgave me. Do you believe me?"

"Yeah." Matt grinned wryly, and Mello breathed a small sigh of relief. "You'd be amazed how open-minded waking up in the afterlife can make an atheist. I also saw…something." He shook his head in bemusement. "We've only been apart for a week, but I can see that we already have a lot of catching up to do."

"A week?" repeated Mello numbly. He couldn't believe that that had been a mere seven days.

"For me," amended Matt quickly. "Longer for you." He laced his fingers through Mello's. "You must have been scared," he said softly.

He had been. And that was okay. He could admit to that. "Yes. I was scared."

"It's over now." Matt held him close. "You came through it. I'm proud of you." He stepped back and put one arm around Mello's shoulders. "You won't believe what happened while you were…wherever."

"Oh?" Matt led him to a break in the clouds and pointed downwards. Mello followed his gesture and gasped. He could see into the world. Kira was dead. His body had been buried in a quiet ceremony open only to those few who knew his identity. Near was holding a press conference through video feeds as L, playing down the sudden cessation of the punishment of criminals over the past five days. It was over; people were already beginning to move on.

Mello wept again. The world was free at last. "Sunrise," he sobbed. "It's a new day."

Matt squeezed him reassuringly. "For us, too. Look." He pointed. "Did you see it?"

He hadn't, but he did now. The Gate was huge and grand, its golden spires reaching many stories into the sky. It glowed. "It's beautiful!" he gasped.

"It—it is?" Matt peered at him, then at the Gate. "What do you see?" When he told him, Matt laughed. "Damn. I just see a point. I feel so cheated!"

"What a boring mind you have," said Mello, grinning slightly. He felt like he was beginning to recover his equilibrium.

Matt just laughed and began leading him towards the Gate. "I'll work on being a little more interesting. Mel, I'm going to introduce you to my father. You'll love him. Well, actually he'll probably talk your ear off about sports, but he means well—"

Mello had stopped dead in his tracks, overcome by sudden fear. His parents were in there somewhere, too. He was going to meet them. He was finally going to have some answers about why he had been abandoned. He didn't know if those answers would be good.

Matt knew what was bothering him immediately. "Maybe they'll be strict enough Catholics that they disapprove of us," he suggested. "Then you'll have to sneak out of your house at night to see me. Don't worry, though. I have a car. I'll throw rocks at your bedroom window until you come down, and then I'll drive you off to the party with all the cool kids."

Mello had to laugh. He appreciated that Matt was trying to make him feel better, but it didn't calm his nerves. He was afraid of what would happen if he met them and found that they had never cared for him at all.

Matt squeezed him and murmured into his ear. "If you want, I'll go with you when you meet them. We'll face it together."

"I…I think I'd like that," said Mello quietly.

They walked to the Gate and looked at it. Nothing was visible through it. "Are you ready for this?" asked Matt.

"No," Mello answered honestly, his stomach fluttering with nerves.

"Well, me neither, so I guess that makes us even. Hey, Mel. I mean, Mihael." Mello glanced up at him and met shining emerald eyes. "I love you."

Mello smiled. "I love you too."

They kissed. Then, hand in hand, they stepped forward into what came next.


End file.
